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France and Germany agree to block Facebook's Libra | Article [AMP] | Reuters
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 16, 2019

Sept. 16, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cryptocurrency-france-german-id… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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il caso MIT Media Lab - Epstein
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 16, 2019

Sept. 16, 2019

Carissimi, non mi sembra siano passati in lista messaggi relativi allo scandalo che riguarda l'ormai ex Direttore del MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, che ieri si è dimesso sia dal MIT, sia da molti 'board' e istituzioni. Gli articoli fattuali sull'argomento sono ormai molti, segnalo solo quello - decisivo - di Ronan Farrow sul 'New Yorker': https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-university-research-c… <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.newyorker.com_news…> Una sintesi in italiano (non ancora aggiornata con gli sviluppi delle ultime 48 ore) è quella di Bernardo Parrella: https://www.roars.it/online/lo-scandalo-epstein-mette-a-nudo-le-falle-del-n… Aggiungo che ora iniziano anche ad aprirsi crepe sulla credibilità tout court del MIT Media Lab: https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal-food-computers-dont-… Vedremo come andrà a finire... in particolare vedremo come l'istituzione creata nel 1985 da Nicholas Negroponte affronterà non solo lo specifico scandalo, ma più in generale l'evidente cambio di 'zeitgeist' culturale e politico rispetto agli anni della fondazione e, soprattutto, del massimo successo del Media Lab. Per me personalmente questa vicenda ha due livelli principali. Il primo è che conosco abbastanza bene Joi Ito e il suo coté accademico/pubblico (per nulla quello economico/imprenditoriale), conoscenza iniziata quando Joi era il leader di Creative Commons (io per molti anni ho seguito CC Italia). Quello che leggo su questa vicenda, quindi, lo riesco a contestualizzare abbastanza bene. A questo livello continuerò a informarmi per capire quanto meglio possibile che cosa è successo, perché è successo e come è successo, in modo da trarne quante più lezioni possibili sia per il Centro Nexa (dove ci poniamo il problema dei finanziamenti da privati fin dalla fondazione), sia più in generale per l'Università. Quest'ultima frase mi porta al secondo livello, ovvero, quello più generale del finanziamento della ricerca, al di là dello specifico caso da cui son partito. E' un tema enorme, che ho in parte affrontato nel mio libro "Università futura", e che ha molti aspetti, che non mi sogno neanche di sfiorare in questa sede. Osservo solo che da circa 40 anni tutto il sistema socio-politico ha fortemente spinto l'Università a dipendere da fondi privati (in altra sede potremmo parlare dei motivi e degli obiettivi di questa spinta). In alcuni paesi ciò è avvenuto prima, con maggior forza e con minori anticorpi, soprattutto negli USA (ma sospetto anche in UK), in altri è avvenuto, per vari motivi, più tardi, più a macchia di leopardo e con minore intensità. Ora potremmo discutere a lungo di come gestire i fondi privati, di quanti contromisure approntare, di quali codici etici adottare, eccetera eccetera, ma il dato politico fondamentale è che la soluzione migliore (non perfetta: migliore) per finanziare l'Università in modo che possa svolgere adeguatamente la sua complessa missione civile, educativa e cognitiva passa in primis per _adeguati __finanziamenti pubblici_. Discutiamo poi pure del come erogare tali finanziamenti (entità, distribuzione, controlli, trasparenza, ecc.), ma che il finanziamento pubblico debba essere la base è a mio avviso il dato politico fondamentale da cui partire. Se non concentriamo le energie affinché la politica faccia proprio questo dato, ovvero, se ci accontentiamo di indignarci per i singoli scandali, per quanto odiosi (oggi Epstein, domani uno sceicco e dopodomani un oligarca) senza sforzarci di cambiare il contesto in cui questi scandali avvengono, non faremo alcun vero progresso. Buona domenica, juan carlos

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"For Ride-Hailing Drivers, Data Is Power"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 16, 2019

Sept. 16, 2019

*For Ride-Hailing Drivers, Data Is Power** * Sarah Holder Aug 22, 2019 /Uber drivers in Europe and the U.S. are fighting for access to their personal data. // //Whoever wins the lawsuit could get to reframe the terms of the gig economy. /[...] continua qui: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/uber-drivers-lawsuit-persona… /

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"Hubert Horan: Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-One: Mike Isaac’s Book Ignores Economics and Financial Results and Gets the Uber Story Almost Entirely Wrong"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 16, 2019

Sept. 16, 2019

*Hubert Horan: Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-One: Mike Isaac’s ** **Book Ignores Economics and Financial Results and Gets the Uber ** **Story Almost Entirely Wrong* /By Hubert Horan, who has 40 years of experience in the management and // //regulation of transportation companies (primarily airlines). Horan has no // //financial links with any urban car service industry competitors, investors // //or regulators, or any firms that work on behalf of industry participants/ One of the recurring themes of this series has been the poor quality of Uber coverage in the mainstream business and tech press. On September 3rd, Mike Isaac, who has been covering Uber for the New York Times since 2014, published Super Pumped! The Battle For Uber.[1] Isaac’s central argument is that Uber is a fundamentally successful company that was nearly undone by ‘[CEO Travis] Kalanick’s boundary-pushing behavior, unabashed pugnacity, and eventually, the CEO’s own personal decline.” (p. xviii). “Uber was the unicorn to end all unicorns” (p. 6), with the potential to “drag the entire transportation industry out of the analog world and into the digital one” (p. 64). Uber represented the “best and worst of Silicon Valley” (p.xviii). It was “a company worth tens of billions of dollars that succeeded in changing the way we move through the world, yet nearly destroyed itself in a bonfire of bad behavior, ugly decisions, and greed” (p. xx) and provides a cautionary tale “about how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong” and threaten the survival of “a multi-billion dollar empire.” (p. xix). The misogyny and rest of the bonfire of bad behavior directly reflected Kalanick’s personality, and became rampant because Kalanick prevented the Board from exercising normal discipline and control. Isaac argues that Uber was brought back from the depths of its 2017 crises when key Board members realized “Uber didn’t have an image problem, it had a Travis problem” (p.235) and began to assert their role as the adults in the room, initiating the “Battle for Uber”. When an outside investigation led by former Attorney General Eric Holder produced damming findings, the Board forced Kalanick’s resignation as CEO. Since his hiring, new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has worked to “systematically undo nearly everything his predecessor had stood for.” (p. 331) Every component of Isaac’s argument is wrong. [...] continua qui: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/09/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-…

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Pagina Fb sequestrata, ma non viene oscurata - Emilia-Romagna
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 16, 2019

Sept. 16, 2019

<http://www.ansa.it/emiliaromagna/notizie/2019/07/19/pagina-fb-sequestratano…> La pagina Facebook delle maschere bianche contro i presunti 'padroni sfruttatori' di Bologna è sotto sequestro. Il provvedimento di oscuramento è stato disposto a fine maggio, ma, a distanza di più di un mese e mezzo, non è stato possibile eseguirlo. "Dobbiamo prendere atto, con amarezza, che nel tempo della massima formale evidenza della riservatezza, esistono luoghi di fatto inaccessibili anche alla Magistratura più attenta, nei quali sono i gestori dei social a regolare i diritti delle persone", commenta l'avvocato Gabriele Bordoni, difensore di un barista che ha presentato querela, sentendosi diffamato dal contenuto del gruppo chiamato 'Il padrone di merda'. Lo spazio Fb, riconducibile a esponenti di collettivi, raccoglie segnalazioni e pubblica immagini e video delle azioni contro i 'padroni'. A inizio aprile Massimiliano Bolelli, titolare del bar Balanzone di via Petroni, assistito dall'avvocato Bordoni, ha denunciato di essere stato preso di mira con messaggi offensivi e blitz nel locale. Il contesto è questo: <https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/sep/16/horrible-bosses-masked-activ…>

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Ex-Google worker fears 'killer robots' could cause mass atrocities | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 15, 2019

Sept. 15, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/15/ex-google-worker-fears-k…> A new generation of autonomous weapons or “killer robots” could accidentally start a war or cause mass atrocities, a former top Google software engineer has warned. Laura Nolan, who resigned from Google last year in protest at being sent to work on a project to dramatically enhance US military drone technology, has called for all AI killing machines not operated by humans to be banned. Nolan said killer robots not guided by human remote control should be outlawed by the same type of international treaty that bans chemical weapons. Unlike drones, which are controlled by military teams often thousands of miles away from where the flying weapon is being deployed, Nolan said killer robots have the potential to do “calamitous things that they were not originally programmed for”. There is no suggestion that Google is involved in the development of autonomous weapons systems. Last month a UN panel of government experts debated autonomous weapons and found Google to be eschewing AI for use in weapons systems and engaging in best practice. Nolan, who has joined the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and has briefed UN diplomats in New York and Geneva over the dangers posed by autonomous weapons, said: “The likelihood of a disaster is in proportion to how many of these machines will be in a particular area at once. What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed. “There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways. Which is why any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous.” Google recruited Nolan, a computer science graduate from Trinity College Dublin, to work on Project Maven in 2017 after she had been employed by the tech giant for four years, becoming one of its top software engineers in Ireland. She said she became “increasingly ethically concerned” over her role in the Maven programme, which was devised to help the US Department of Defense drastically speed up drone video recognition technology. [...]

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Economist: The alternatives to privatisation and nationalisation
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 15, 2019

Sept. 15, 2019

The alternatives to privatisation and nationalisation More public resources could be managed as commons without much loss of efficiency https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/09/12/the-alternatives… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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A meeting with Jeffrey Epstein led to a gift — and, now, regrets - The Boston Globe
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 15, 2019

Sept. 15, 2019

Il quadro si arricchisce di sempre nuovi elementi. jc https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/09/13/meeting-with-epstein-led-gift-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Google AI propaganda comics
by Antonio Casilli Sept. 15, 2019

Sept. 15, 2019

Remember those old US Christian propaganda comics? Google AI did the same, but for machine learning. Admittedly, this is a useful artifact if you want to summarize the rudiments of it. Plus, it is impeccably crafted, because Google money bought "Bite Me" artist Dylan Meconis and... OMG, Scott McCloud himself. But the amount of ideological BS is unbearable. Especially in light of how they went the extra mile to conceal the #digitallabor that is necessary to generate and annotate data. I mean, for pete's sake, in this story labeled data literally fall from the frigging sky (see case n. 28). And, yes, it is mentioned in passing that when you practice machine learning "you will need humans to sort data by hand". But those humans are not considered essential to and never depicted within the narrative. The story takes place in a STEM world: a white limbo whose only characters are an engineer, a mascot-like computer, and a cat. Here be coders, coders' machines and coders' pets! In this worldwiew, even a feline is more important than a micro-worker to explain how ML comes to be. But enough with me ranting. Here's the story: https://cloud.google.com/products/ai/ml-comic-1/ You can read it, discuss it with friends, use it to teach your "AI & society 101" class. But always remember that, in the immortal words of Shakespeare, "this is a tale told by a software engineer, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (but their own viewpoint)". -- Antonio A. Casilli Associate Professor (HDR), Telecom Paris (Paris School of Telecommunications) Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society

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Libraries and Archivists Are Scanning and Uploading Books That Are Secretly in the Public Domain - VICE
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 15, 2019

Sept. 15, 2019

Libraries and Archivists Are Scanning and Uploading Books That Are Secretly in the Public Domain Millions of books are secretly in the public domain thanks to a copyright loophole, a new project seeks to put them on the Internet Archive. By Karl Bode | Sep 10 2019, 2:26pm https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3534j/libraries-and-archivists-are-scan… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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